127 - Are you measuring your decluttering progress wrong?

Summary

You spent hours decluttering. You are tired. You look around the room and it looks basically the same. Sound familiar?

That feeling is one of the most common things Heather hears from clients, and it is one of the most demoralising parts of the whole process. In this episode, she explains exactly why that feeling is lying to you.

Spoiler: decluttering is decision-making. Some categories, like paper, can contain hundreds or even thousands of individual decisions that take real time and real mental energy — without producing any obvious visual results at all.

In this episode Heather covers:

• Why visible before and afters are not a reliable measure of how much you actually achieved
• Why paper and bitty bits can take hours with almost nothing to show for it visually
• The two questions to ask yourself at the end of every decluttering session instead
• Why the transformation you are imagining will happen — you just cannot skip to it

Chapters

00:00
Introduction: Why Decluttering Feels Unproductive

00:29
Common Frustrations with Decluttering Efforts

01:20
The Myth of Visible Results in Decluttering

02:11
Why Dramatic Before-and-After Photos Are Misleading

03:03
The Snowball Effect and When Results Become Visible

03:56
The Complexity of Paper Decluttering

05:19
Reframing Progress: Focus on Decisions, Not Looks

06:34
Measuring Progress Through Decisions and Items Removed

07:55
The Power of Letting Go and Visualizing Progress

08:48
Invisible Work: The Hardest Part of Decluttering

09:48
Encouragement to Stay the Course and Celebrate Decisions

Transcript

Heather Tingle (00:00.92)
Hello, untanglers, and welcome back to another episode of Decluttering Untangled with me, your host, Heather Tingle. So today's episode is for anyone who has ever spent a whole afternoon decluttering, sat back at the end of it, looked around the room and thought, what was the point? Because the room looks basically the same. You're tired, you've got nothing to show for it, and that feeling is genuinely like, it's so demoralizing. So this episode is about why that feeling is lying to you.

because it's one of the most common things I hear from clients, both ones I work with in person and the ones in the community and our Untangled Life membership. So they've put in the time, they've sat down and done the thing and they've gone through the stuff and at end of it, they feel like they've got absolutely nothing to show for it apart from feeling tired and probably having a headache. So that feeling makes people want to stop and it makes them wonder if...

what is it they're doing wrong or if the situation is somehow worse than everybody else's or if decluttering just doesn't work for them and they're never gonna make it. So if that sounds familiar, I really want you to listen to this episode because by the end of it, I really hope you can look at decluttering sessions in a different way or rather the end of your decluttering sessions in a different way. And I think we're wired to measure progress by what we can see. So a cleared surface, an empty shelf.

A room that looks noticeably different from how it looked before you started, you those before and after transformations. So I think the decluttering world and social media does not help with this because social media is full of those dramatic befores and afters. It's all, I know I used to look at them and think, like look at the before photo and look at the after photo, isn't it amazing? And wouldn't it be great if my house did that? And yes, taking photos can be a really useful indication for you.

but what happens when you take a photo and it doesn't really look that much different after. So things like TV shows, show those again, quick, amazing transformations, rooms that go from absolute chaos to calm and organised in like a single reel or a single post or a single episode. And it feels really satisfying seeing them perfectly label shelves, know, all that prettiness.

Heather Tingle (02:15.948)
But when your own decluttering session doesn't produce that, it can feel like a bit of a failure and it feels like you did it wrong or you didn't do enough or you're somehow behind where you should be. And I always say it's a lot like the snowball is that you'll look like you're going uphill, uphill, uphill, uphill and there will become a point where it all just starts to click into place and it gets so much easier. So you just got to keep at it because

The real reality is that visible dramatic results only happen at certain stage of the process and that is usually quite far along. So you've just got to keep going. Now getting there does require an enormous amount of work. It does, there's no getting around it. And a lot of the time from the outside looking in, it's difficult to see.

So you've got to like zone stuff, you've got to maybe do a first sift and then you got to full on decision make. And that only becomes a certain point in the process where you get into the wards, I don't know, three quarters of the way through the decision making progress in your house, where it all clicked and you then see the massive visible results. You'll see little pockets maybe on the way, which keep you going. But it's only really when you get three quarters foot like through that you can see it. So.

A really good example of really what I'm talking about and what I've seen with a couple of clients recently is when we're going through paper. So paper decisions like letters and envelopes and all that kind of stuff. So paper's a really good example. for example, you might take it from a doom box or a bag and then put it all together in one box. This is what I always tell my clients do, get it all together first. You can then spend hours on one massive jumbled box of paperwork. It can take you ages.

because you've got to go through every single piece. You've got to look for like dates or what it is. You've got to comprehend what it is and then you've got to decide on it. So you're making decision after decision after decision. And at the end of it, the room looks exactly the same apart from that one box. And actually that box might even still be there, just about got a few bits in it. That does not mean that nothing happened, not even close. And actually, if you've seen any of my social media, might have seen

Heather Tingle (04:35.443)
me when I was doing my paper and I got 17 archive boxes of paperwork to go through and there's a photo of the 17 boxes of paperwork and then there's a photo of a load of papers in piles on my floor and I'm like, this is actually gonna kill me, like this is taking forever because it does, it takes a long time. But it's not just paper that does this, it's all sorts of things. So I want you to think of things in a different way to measure your progress.

I want you to think of progress markers as something different than what you see. Because decluttering is decision making. That's its whole job. Every single item requires a decision and sometimes more than one. Let's face it, like, is it staying? Is it going? If it stays, where does it live? Is it in the right room? Does it serve a purpose? Am I going to put it in donate, recycle, like bin? Like, what is it? Do I love it? Million questions, every single item, every single type. So.

Let's go back to that box of paper as an example. So a box of paper is not one thing. It's really great to reduce visual clutter if it is in one box, because then you see one thing rather than like 500 things. So it might be 500 things in that box or it might be a thousand things. There might be lots of things like bank statements, every letter, instruction manual, birthday card, every random receipt you kept for a reason that you now can't remember. And every one of those is a separate decision. Now, if you sat down and worked through that box and made a call on every single like,

piece of paper, you've probably made 500 decisions or a thousand, whatever number was in the box. That is not nothing. That is an enormous amount of mental work, so much more than you ever normally do in a day, above and beyond what you normally do. That is what decluttering requires to have.

And the fact that it doesn't look dramatic from the outside does not change what you actually did and how much progress you made in that session. So what I would like you to ask yourself, the question to ask after a decluttering session is not how does the room look now? Hopefully no worse than what you started. But the question I want you to ask is how many permanent decisions did I make today?

Heather Tingle (06:53.079)
permanent decisions, not I'll think about this later, not I'll put this one aside for now, not I'm not sure, but actual decisions made, done, not needing to be revisited. That number is a real measure of your progress. So if a visual, if visual room changes are not a reliable measure of progress, that's one. So it's two things. How many permanent decisions did you make? Decisions that are finished, done, not going back to them, that's progress.

use that as a measure. How many decisions did I make today? So it might be, how many items did I touch today to make a decision on? The second one is also really important. And I love this one. What is leaving your home? Every single item that leaves is a decision that is completely finished. Well done.

It will never come back to the pile. It is not needed to be decided on again of where it's gonna live or where it's gonna go or anything like that. It is decided on. It is gone and that space and that mental load has gone with it. Amazing. That's why I love to ask clients, what did you let go of today? Now, if you've only got a few, know, if you've got a handful of pieces of paper, it might not look like much, but if you look at how many pieces of paper is actually going, might be 50, might be 100.

That's 100 items that are leaving your house, never to return. Well done. It might not be paper, but it might be other things. And that's why I like the master tracker. It's a bit of a plug, really sorry, but I'm not sorry. The master tracker in my Declure Your Home Planner is so useful. You're colouring a bag every time a bag leaves your home so you can visually see the progress you are really making.

because it really does add up quick and it keeps you motivated to keep going. So they're the two things that are actual indicators of progress, not the state of the room, not how it looks in a photo. If decisions are being made and things are leaving, you are making progress. That is it. The transformation you are imagining does happen though. You will get there.

Heather Tingle (09:09.525)
the room that looks different, a space that feels calm, the before and after of what you actually want to take a photo of, that will come. But it comes after the majority of the decisions are done. You're probably just in the beginning or middle of it. Keep going. You can't just skip to the pretty bit and the satisfying bit. Yeah, the satisfying bit is the reward for all the invisible work, like the zoning and the deciding that you do first. So if you're in the paper stage or the sentimental item stage, or you're dealing with the little bitty bits,

or any category that is heavy on decisions and light on obvious visual results, stay with it because you are doing the hardest part. That is the part that makes everything else that follows possible. So every decision you make is a step forward. Okay, so just to recap, visual progress is not always a reliable measure on what you are actually achieving. Decluttering is decision-making and some categories, especially things like paper or bitty bits at the bottom of a bag of doom,

are hundreds of individual decisions that take real time and real mental energy. So after your next session, instead of looking at the room and asking how much better it looks, ask yourself, how many permanent decisions did you make today and how many items have left your home? Those two things are the real indicators of progress. The visual transformation, I promise you, and I can't promise you enough, like this will happen. Just keep at it. So.

If this episode has helped, come and share in my untangled community on Facebook. Tell us how many decisions you made today. I will be just as proud of your 25, 50, 500 paper decisions as we are of the before and after photos because we know those of us that are in this community get how much work it actually takes. This is real life that we live with. So until next time, remember you're not alone. Be kind to yourself and keep untangling.